An international website dedicated to providing current information on news, reports, publications,and peer-reviewed research articles concerning alcoholism and alcohol-related problems throughout the world.
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To support the free and open dissemination of research findings and information on alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. To encourage open access to peer-reviewed articles free for all to view.

For full versions of posted research articles readers are encouraged to email requests for "electronic reprints" (text file, PDF files, FAX copies) to the corresponding or lead author, who is highlighted in the posting.

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Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Alcohol News - 40/2011

BBN (Estonia) - Government approves alcohol-tax increase from January

Estonia’s government agreed to raise alcohol taxes from January in spite of having pledged in May that it would not raise the alcohol excise in 2012.

The drinking habits of parents, or more specifically the drinking problems of parents, become most unpleasant in the eyes of their offspring when they lead to reneging on what has previously been agreed and promised.

THE Q bar in the Westlands district of Nairobi is the sort of place that makes marketers salivate. A few pool tables, a few flat-screen televisions (not all tuned to English football), some prostitutes, but not enough to scare off girlfriends, the bottles tidily arranged behind the bar, a soft gangsta soundtrack, and a crowd full of wage-earning 20-something men.

An internal report from South Sudan ministry of gender,child and social welfare seen by Sudan Tribune on Saturday said that children under the legal limit of 18 are involved in the sale and widespread consumption of alcohol.

MarketWatch (Canada) - National Report Sheds Light on Student Alcohol and Drug Use

Authors of a new report released today on alcohol and drug use by high school students across Canada raise concern about the prevalence of alcohol and cannabis use among senior high school students (grades 10-12). Specifically, they highlight the percentage of 12th graders who report drinking to excess, using cannabis daily, and/or driving after drinking or using cannabis.

Researchers at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health studied deaths before and after a reduction in the price of alcohol in Finland, and tracked the fatalities attributable to alcohol abuse — liver disease, alcohol poisoning, alcohol-related violence or accidents, among others. The results appear in the September issue of PLoS Medicine.

It’s all common to find our women dancing, exposing part of their body, and singing all in the name of alcohol. For the past one decade in the history of Ghana, our country has witnessed the proliferation of alcohol products with major advertisement in either a huge bill board in town or ads on our major television stations.

Illegal substances such as heroin, cocaine, marijauna and the like are considered by many people as deadly forms of recreation, not knowing that alcohol may be just as deadly as hard drugs or even worse.

Alcohol changes the anti-viral and inflammatory functions of monocytes. “Alcohol has a profound effect of inhibiting IFN production in monocytes regardless of whether the danger signal is intracellular (TLR8) or surface-derived (TLR4). Such a reduction would impair the body’s ability to fight off infection,” Prof Szabo said.

Top health officials from North, Central and South America and the Caribbean have endorsed a series of actions that the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) says could significantly reduce the public health impact of alcohol.

Fiji Times (Fiji) - Scale up action to control alcohol and tobacco use

World Health Organisation South Pacific officer in charge Steve Iddings said non-communicable diseases were claiming victims at increasingly younger ages, even during childhood, depriving many people of their most productive years.